Snowscape
by Onkoona
Summary: Tired and cold he arrives. Will he find warmth in his self imposed solitude? (A short Sai x Hikaru romance, very soft yaoi. AU)


_**Snowscape**_

_Hikaru no Go and it's characters belong to their makers, I'm just borrowing them for a while._

Getting there had been the hard part, the /shinkansen*/ can only go so far and the ferry ride was rough and he was now bone weary. But finally he had arrived in Shiriao, Hokkaido.

A taxi ride to took him to the /ryokan**/ Ogata had booked for him. Since it was the winter season the inn keeper had initially refused Sai service, saying it wasn't worth running the inn for just one person, and even though Fujiwara Sai was now a title holder, after the ordeals of these last 6 months, he hadn't had the energy to fight them man. So Ogata had taken care of it when the 10-dan had found his rival sitting in a dark corner of the Go institute, his face wet with tears.

Sai had been mortified, but the 10-dan had told him firmly to go have a long rest and then come back and give Ogata a real run for his money. Sai remembered smiling, if a bit weakly and he promised he would do just that, and then some!

So the inn he'd be going to was going to blissfully devoid of people. It wasn't that Sai was anti-social but after the cancer he was just so tired.

The taxi dropped him off right outside the inn's front garden. The place was build completely in the Japanese style, with a small ornate garden, now dead with winter, a dark wood patio and connecting walkways, dark wood sliding panels and its roof was covered in snow as was the mountainside out back. It was beautiful and peaceful. Just what the doctor ordered.

Sai set his bag on the edge of the patio as he slipped off his shoes, stepping onto the dark wood. He then retrieved his shoes and put them on the tray that was obviously set out on the patio to receive them. He picked up his bag and glided to the front door screen and was about to knock when it slid open to reveal the inn-keeper. Whose appearance in no way met with Sai's traditionally minded expectation.

Before him stood a young man, wearing a faded Iron Maiden T-shirt, blue jeans, thick gray socks, and no slippers, and who wore his hair short at the back and half long at the front, bleach-dyed in some ghastly imitation of the latest Tokyo fashion. Sai's jaw dropped; this was the help at one of the most traditional inns of Hokkaido? The Shindou Inn had a very prestigious reputation, surely this young man was lost somehow?

"Welcome to the Shindou Inn, Shindou Hikaru at your service, please come in, it's cold outside," the young man said, speaking politely and bowing in all the right places. Well, at least that's something, Sai thought and stepped inside, saying the polite phrase for entering a house without giving it a second thought.

The young wanted to fill out the register first but Sai decided to insist on seeing his room first; he was so tired and cold. Shindou didn't resist much and presently Sai was sitting on a cushion in his blissfully warm room, an unusual thing in a traditional inn, but in this case much appreciated. And the tea the inn-keeper brought was just as much appreciated. The young man's comment of 'you really look all done in, mate,' not so much, but Sai was too tired to react to it.

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Sai woke up to early morning bird song. He sat up on a futon he didn't remember going to bed on. In fact he didn't remember getting ready for bed at all, but he was wearing a night kimono, not his, his was white with small pink flowers around the collar, this one was pale yellow and without any design. So how had he ended up in bed like that?

He looked around the room. The day before it had been late afternoon when he had arrived and had not noted the content or layout of the room, or even the inn, before winking out like a rag doll it seemed. So now he looked and it turned out the room had both modern and old fashioned elements. Traditional low furniture, including a /kotatsu***/, the futon he was sitting on and some really nice calligraphy scrolls on the walls. His bag sat unopened on a low chest of drawers and one wall was entirely filled with a double glazed sliding door, showing a snow covered ornamental garden outside. The door was closed and it was nice and warm inside.

Sai gingerly got to his feet and with a practiced move he folded the futon in three and put it aside so he could move about the modestly sized room; he was used to close quarters, the living room of his flat in Tokyo wasn't much bigger than this and he really didn't need bigger.

Sai started at the sound of the inner door sliding open. On his knees sat the young man with the yellow bangs, who bowed and said, 'Good morning, I hope you slept well. I can bring you breakfast here or you are welcome to come to the dining room.'

Sai didn't respond to either greeting or the choice, instead he found himself saying angrily, 'How did I end up in bed last night? Did you touch me? Did you undress me? Did you see me naked?' he almost yelled, tears burning in his eyes.

A blush appeared on the young man's face. 'Well,' he started, giving a good imitation of a naughty puppy getting caught red handed. 'I, uh, well, when you arrived here, you didn't look so good, so I looked in about an hour after I'd left you in the room, and, uhm, you were asleep and your head was sorta at the wrong angle for sleeping so I came in and was gonna wake you up, but you looked like you really needed the rest so I kinda laid ya down and then you were still wearing your outside coat and so I took it off and then I got out the futon so I could put you on it, so then I decided I might was well put you to bed properly. Your friend had said you'd been ill and what with the wooly hat, I'm guessing cancer? Uh, sorry, I guess,' he finished looking uncomfortable, most probably at the look on Sai's face, because if it showed only half as much as Sai was feeling just then, it must have looked very scary indeed.

"Get out," was all Sai could mange, as he almost hurt his hands twisting the fabric at the front of his kimono; it was that or hit the man. Shindou bowed, said sorry again and finally left, sliding the inner door shut.

For a long time Sai sat numbly with his back to the futon bundle that was now pushed to the wall, legs drawn up. Even here it hounded him, even here everybody knew. He lowered his head to his knees and cried.

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Shindou brought breakfast and apologized again. Then lunch with another apology. By dinner time Sai had sort of forgiven him and they ended up eating their meal together in the dining room. And they talked.

'I'm sorry about what I did, but please believe me when I say there is no reason for concern; I'm training as a nurse so I'm used to doing this kinda thing,' the young man said. He then told Sai that the Shindou inn was run by his parents and that in the off season they'd sometimes travel and then Hikaru or one of his two sisters would help out if needed. Hikaru, it turned out, was training in a small hospital in Tokyo.

"Ogata-san was really quite concerned about you when he called yesterday morning," Hikaru said. "He sounds like a very nice man. Are you and he an item," the young man asked, even making quotation marks around the word 'item'.

Sai looked down at the table top with the ravages of dinner still sitting on top. "Oh, no," he said softly. "Without my hair and being as thin and pale as this, who would have me?" he added.

"Nothing wrong with you that I can see that some good food and better rest can't fix," Hikaru pronounced, and a finger appeared in Sai's line of sight as it hooked under his chin and gently forced his head up so their gazes met.

"And my hair?" Sai asked so softly he feared Hikaru hadn't heard him.

"Your hair will grow back," the man said with a confidence Sai felt compelled to believe.

"And..?" Sai started but couldn't finish because Hikaru's lips where touching his own and it felt so warm and alive.

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"I see three weeks in the snow has done you the world of good," Ogata said cheerfully after having pronounced his side's loss. And so it had, Sai thought, so it had.

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The End

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* shinkansen = bullet train

** ryokan = traditional Japanese inn

*** kotatsu = a low table with a blanket on top and a heat source underneath to keep feet and legs warm during winter.

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Written for Blind Go mini round 005: winter.  
With max word count restriction of 1,500 words.

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Author note:  
I'm not 100% happy with what I had to leave out because of the 1,500 word limit. It's quite possible I'll add some out-takes or maybe even a second chapter later. So do feel free to follow this story. I can't promise anything fast, but one of these days...

Wishing all a fabulous 2014!

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**Don't forget to review!**


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